Now aged eighty-nine, Alamgir, wizened, morose and ailing, finally collapsed at Ahmadnagar – ‘my journey’s end’ – tended by his daughter Zinatunnisa. ‘I don’t know who I am and what I’ve been doing,’ he confessed to his son Azzam. ‘I entirely lacked statesmanship.’ In his will he advised his successors, ‘never trust your sons, nor treat them intimately …’ Signing off to Azzam – ‘goodbye, goodbye, goodbye’ – on 3 March 1707, he died as ‘a whirlwind arose so fierce that it blew down all the tents standing in the encampment. Many persons and animals were killed … Villages were destroyed.’ This time, the war between his sons, won by Muazzam (Bahadurshah), who killed Azzam, broke the empire. ‘After me,’ he had warned, ‘chaos!’
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In March 1702, William III was riding close to his home, Kensington Palace, when his horse tripped on a molehill and threw him. He died as Jacobites toasted ‘the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat’ – but the war against Louis went on and the new Queen Anne promoted John Churchill, earl of Marlborough, to captain-general and co-leader of a ministry with his dearest friend Sidney Godolphin, lord treasurer. Sarah Churchill tried to direct the insecure and ailing queen, tormented by twelve failed pregnancies. The two women were intimate friends, using the codenames Mrs Freeman (Sarah) and Mrs Morley (Anne), but there were two others in the partnership: Mr Freeman (Marlborough) and Mr Montgomery (Godolphin). ‘Every day,’ wrote Anne to Sarah, ‘makes me more and more sensible of the great blessing God Almighty has given me in three such friends as your dear self, Mr Freeman and Mr Montgomery.’
Small, dark, reticent and incorruptible, Godolphin, who had served in the treasury under Charles, James and William, became the first real prime minister, a magisterial administrator of Parliament and finance, whose protégé Robert Walpole praised his ‘good management, prudence and dexterity’.* No minister before had ever had to raise such vast sums as Godolphin did to fund a European war, but he also negotiated a union between England and Scotland, persuading the Scottish parliamentarians to merge with the London Parliament* and so becoming in 1707 the first lord treasurer of Great Britain. His fellow duumvir Marlborough was now fifty and untried, yet he proved the greatest of British generals. ‘I long to be with you,’ Marlborough wrote to Godolphin, whose letters were ‘one of the greatest pleasures I have’. While the general was away, Sarah closely advised Godolphin. The duumvirs arranged marriages between their children.
Sailing for Europe, Marlborough directed the coalition of the Dutch and the Habsburgs, but he also won the battles, his finest hour being a forced march 250 miles southwards in summer 1704 to save Vienna from a French army. He rendezvoused with the Habsburg commander, Prince Eugen of Savoy, and together they routed the French–Bavarian army at Blenheim. ‘Give my duty to the Queen,’ wrote Marlborough to Sarah, ‘and let her know her army has had a glorious victory.’ Eugen – angular, ugly, slovenly, peppered with snuff but brilliant – was no less remarkable* and they formed a rare double act. ‘Prince Eugen and I never differ about our share of the laurels,’ said Marlborough. ‘I not only esteem but I really love the prince.’ Leading charges in battles, sometimes unhorsed as equerries were beheaded beside him, Marlborough won a spree of victories and as ambassador-general held the coalition together. In April 1707, he set off on an important mission, to visit the ascetic warrior king of Sweden, Charles XII, in Saxony.
The Muscovite tsar Peter I and his ally Augustus the Strong, king of Poland and elector of Saxony, had attacked Sweden, hoping to carve up its Baltic lands. But Charles stormed across the Baltic, defeated Peter and deposed Augustus, before occupying Poland. Still only twenty-five, he was debating whether to join France against the Habsburgs or attack Muscovy. Marlborough, keen to ensure that he attacked Peter,* flattered Charles, who anyway saw Muscovy as the bigger threat. On 1 January 1708 the Swedish king invaded Muscovy, the first of three modern invaders to underestimate the span of Russia. Charles swerved south into Ukraine.
